1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method to prevent fiber distortion in textile materials. In particular, the present invention is directed to locally bonding warp and fill (weft) yarns of a fabric together to eliminate fabric skewing during a modified weaving process for weaving net-shaped tailored fabrics where fiber orientations may be non-orthogonal. These fabrics can be used to create optimally designed curved frames or other skeletal structures as well as skin type structures having compound curvatures.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, fabric used in composite materials is very tightly woven together and does not readily skew due to a change in the spacing and orientation of fill yarns relative to warp yarns. Skewing can become a significant problem when a substantially unidirectional (uniweave) fabric having the compound fill yarns which are non-orthogonal, such as curved frames and other skeletal structures, is woven. This is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 017,205, filed Feb. 10, 1993, issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,394,906, on Mar. 7, 1995, and incorporated by reference herein. Skewing significantly impacts the economical and structural performance of net shaped tailored fabrics and hence necessitated the development of this technology.
Weaving fabric with fill yarns at non-orthogonal angles to the warp yarns can cause the fabric to skew after the fabric is removed from the loom. When the fabric skews, a considerable amount of manual labor is required during a layup process to correctly reorient the fabric. Even after the fabric has been reoriented, the uniformity of the fibers may have been significantly compromised.